The Conductor study showed that there was rich media on the search results page 34% of the time. The breakdown of rich media showed images appear on 28% of search results pages, news 9%, and shopping 1%. You have to keep in mind, rich media in search results is incredibly query-dependent. So, based on the sampling of Conductor’s study, 34% was the number they reached.

88% Of The Search Results Contain 9 Organic Results

88% of SERPs have 9 or more natural search links, with 73% having exactly ten organic results. This shows that while many say the ten blue links are gone, that is, indeed, not the case.

56% Of The Search Results Have 9 Search Ads

Finally, Conductor’s study says 56% of search pages now have 9 or more paid ads. I posted the breakdown of the study below. But, Conductor adds that despite there being so many paid search ads, “eye-tracking studies show that increasingly, searchers are tuning out ads and focusing on organic results.”

Earlier this week, we reported a glitch in Google Search, where clicking on a link after a search for Gmail listed someone’s email address, complete in a window ready to send them email. With today’s Gmail outage, that error — never fixed — has resulted in at least one person getting thousands of unwanted emails.

You can still see the error now. Search for “gmail” in Google:

Under the main listing, you’ll see an “Email” link — what’s called a “sitelink” that’s designed to help people navigate to specific places within a web site.

The problem is, that link doesn’t point to a page within Gmail that talks about Gmail’s features. Instead, it lists someone’s email address and causes a compose window to appear, as shown above.

When we reported on this Monday, the email address led to someone with an account using the rideskole.no domain. Today, it’s someone with a Hotmail account — and that person says they are being flooded with email.

�I�ve been getting thousands of no-subject, blank emails …. 500 of them come every hour, I can�t stop them,� said David S. Peck, in a story from TechCrunch about how he’s being hammered by emails.

This error is not caused by Gmail having gone down briefly today. As noted above, it was a problem from at least this past Monday. However, when Gmail crashed, there was likely a spike in people searching for Gmail on Google, and a rise in clicks on this secondary URL, since the main Gmail link wasn’t working. In turn, Peck likely started getting all these emails.

Why his address? Why someone else’s address earlier this week? If we learn more from Google, we’ll let you know.

Postscript: Google said this is now fixed, sending us this statement:

Due to a technical glitch, some email addresses on public webpages appeared too prominently in search results. We�ve fixed the issue and are sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Earlier this week, we reported a glitch in Google Search, where clicking on a link after a search for Gmail listed someone’s email address, complete in a window ready to send them email. With today’s Gmail outage, that error — never fixed — has resulted in at least one person getting thousands of unwanted emails.

You can still see the error now. Search for “gmail” in Google:

Under the main listing, you’ll see an “Email” link — what’s called a “sitelink” that’s designed to help people navigate to specific places within a web site.

The problem is, that link doesn’t point to a page within Gmail that talks about Gmail’s features. Instead, it lists someone’s email address and causes a compose window to appear, as shown above.

When we reported on this Monday, the email address led to someone with an account using the rideskole.no domain. Today, it’s someone with a Hotmail account — and that person says they are being flooded with email.

�I�ve been getting thousands of no-subject, blank emails …. 500 of them come every hour, I can�t stop them,� said David S. Peck, in a story from TechCrunch about how he’s being hammered by emails.

This error is not caused by Gmail having gone down briefly today. As noted above, it was a problem from at least this past Monday. However, when Gmail crashed, there was likely a spike in people searching for Gmail on Google, and a rise in clicks on this secondary URL, since the main Gmail link wasn’t working. In turn, Peck likely started getting all these emails.

Why his address? Why someone else’s address earlier this week? If we learn more from Google, we’ll let you know.

Postscript: Google said this is now fixed, sending us this statement:

Due to a technical glitch, some email addresses on public webpages appeared too prominently in search results. We�ve fixed the issue and are sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Google announced it is implementing new crawl error reports in Webmaster Tools to help webmasters understand crawl errors that are being displayed for redirected URLs.

There has been much confusion from webmasters over what exactly the crawl errors meant for redirected URLs and the way they were being displayed within Webmaster Tools. The confusion came about because when a webmaster was redirected from Site A to Site B, if there was a problem on Site B’s site in regards to the redirect, it would display a crawl error that it was from Site A, when what it really meant was that there was an error redirecting from Site A to Site B.

Because redirect crawl errors were not very concise, webmasters were struggling to determine what the true error was, and where within the redirect it was occurring, especially for those webmasters who aren't very technical. Was it a problem with redirect itself? Was it a problem with the end redirect page? Both?

This change will make a lot easier for webmasters to track down crawl errors, why they are happening, and how to fix them without having to do a lot of back and forth checking with tools to determine what exactly was going on.

Google also stresses that having crawl errors, such as a 404, that are not a true error because the page design exists, it will not negatively impact the rest of the site’s rankings in the Google search results. In fact, John Mueller from Google said, "Finding 404's is normal and expected of a healthy, well-configured website."

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned MediaJoin the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!Find out more ››

Leaving nothing to chance, Apple’s ensured that anyone searching for “Mac” on Google or Bing today, the 30th birthday of the Mac, will know about the anniversary. The company has purchased ads that lead to a special Mac birthday area of the Apple site.

Above is an example of what shows on Google, for a search on “Mac,” an ad saying “Happy Birthday, Mac” and inviting people to “Explore 30 years of innovation on the Mac.” The ad links over to the page at Apple about Macs, which has a pitch for the birthday area:

The birthday area itself has a special video for the Mac’s 30th anniversary (which you can also view on YouTube):

There’s also a timeline of major Mac moments:

Those who go to the Apple site directly will find the entire home page has been taken over for the anniversary:

Over at Bing, there’s a similar ad:

Yahoo, which uses Bing’s ads, also has the Apple ad appearing.

Google, which does special logos for major birthdays and anniversaries, didn’t honor the Mac’s 30th. Nor did Bing, which does custom home page backgrounds for special events.

Google announced it is implementing new crawl error reports in Webmaster Tools to help webmasters understand crawl errors that are being displayed for redirected URLs.

There has been much confusion from webmasters over what exactly the crawl errors meant for redirected URLs and the way they were being displayed within Webmaster Tools. The confusion came about because when a webmaster was redirected from Site A to Site B, if there was a problem on Site B’s site in regards to the redirect, it would display a crawl error that it was from Site A, when what it really meant was that there was an error redirecting from Site A to Site B.

Because redirect crawl errors were not very concise, webmasters were struggling to determine what the true error was, and where within the redirect it was occurring, especially for those webmasters who aren't very technical. Was it a problem with redirect itself? Was it a problem with the end redirect page? Both?

This change will make a lot easier for webmasters to track down crawl errors, why they are happening, and how to fix them without having to do a lot of back and forth checking with tools to determine what exactly was going on.

Google also stresses that having crawl errors, such as a 404, that are not a true error because the page design exists, it will not negatively impact the rest of the site’s rankings in the Google search results. In fact, John Mueller from Google said, "Finding 404's is normal and expected of a healthy, well-configured website."

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned MediaJoin the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!Find out more ››

A judge has determined patent-holding company Vringo is entitled to additional royalties from Google in a patent infringement case involving Google AdWords.

The order stems from a case brought by Vringo subsidiary I/P Engine in 2011 that claimed filtering technology used in Google AdWords violated two of its patents. A jury found in favor of I/P Engine, awarding it $30,496,155 and running royalty payments of 3.5 percent. The case is I/P Engine Inc. v. AOL Inc., 11cv512.

Google claimed to have updated the AdWords system in May 2013 in such a way that the patents were no longer applicable and said it should not be subject to royalty payments after that point.

In a Memorandum Order issued yesterday, U.S. District Judge�Raymond A Jackson disagreed writing, the modified version of AdWords “is nothing more than a colorable variation of the infringing system.” As such Vringo is “entitled to ongoing royalties as long as Defendants continue to use the modified system.”

The 90′s era patents originate from Lycos. Vringo bought the two patents — 6,314,420 entitled “Collaborative/adaptive search engine” and 6,775,664 entitled “Information filter system and method for integrated content-based and collaborative/adaptive feedback queries”– and 6 others in June 2011. It files suit against Google and its customers AOL, Gannett, IAC and Target in September of that year.

Vringo also sued Microsoft in 2013 using the same patents. Microsoft settled with the company.

Matt Kallman, a Google spokesperson told The Washington Post that the “decision further highlights the mischief trolls can make with the patent system.” Google is appealing the ruling.

Google is appealing the original ruling in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (I/P Engine Inc. v. AOL Inc., 14-1233). Google’s Kallman also said Google will likely be “seeking review of today�s decision as well.�

The excerpts below from the memorandum order provide more background on I/P Engine’s original trial argument regarding AdWords’ process for ad serving and the why the court found that the “new AdWords” of post-May 2013 was essentially the same as the “old AdWords” as it relates to the two patents:

At the trial in this case, I/P Engine’s infringement expert, Dr. Ophir Frieder, testified that old AdWords infringed I/P Engine’s patents at multiple points in the process of selecting which ads would be displayed for a given query. Specifically, this occurred at two so-called “disabling” steps and one “promotion” step, all of which occurred prior to the auction for ad space. Each step used a “predicted click-through� rate,” a quality score based on the combination of content and collaborative data. The selection of ads based on this combination was Dr. Frieder’s central theory of infringement at trial. Ads, however, were not selected based only on this predicted click-through rate; instead, that score formed part of the “long term value,” or LTV score, which included data on the quality of the webpage, the minimum bid, and other factors.� For an ad to proceed to the next step, it was required to have an LTV score greater than zero.

The Court has, however, thoroughly reviewed the experts’ descriptions of new AdWords and the ways in which it differs from old AdWords, and is confident that I/P Engine has shown that new AdWords is no more than a colorable variation of old AdWords. Suffice it to say that it is undisputed that new AdWords continues to use a candidate advertisement’s LTV score that includes a predicted click-through rate in the process of choosing which advertisement will ultimately be shown to the individual performing the query.� The only differences between the two systems that are potentially relevant in light of I/P Engine’s theory of infringement at trial is that the LTV score is no longer used at the multiple steps just described, and occurs once at a different point in the process of selecting which advertisements will ultimately be shown to users.

I/P Engine has also proven that new AdWords, like old AdWords, infringes its patents by filtering based on the combination of collaborative and content data.”

Earlier this week, we reported a glitch in Google Search, where clicking on a link after a search for Gmail listed someone’s email address, complete in a window ready to send them email. With today’s Gmail outage, that error — never fixed — has resulted in at least one person getting thousands of unwanted emails.

You can still see the error now. Search for “gmail” in Google:

Under the main listing, you’ll see an “Email” link — what’s called a “sitelink” that’s designed to help people navigate to specific places within a web site.

The problem is, that link doesn’t point to a page within Gmail that talks about Gmail’s features. Instead, it lists someone’s email address and causes a compose window to appear, as shown above.

When we reported on this Monday, the email address led to someone with an account using the rideskole.no domain. Today, it’s someone with a Hotmail account — and that person says they are being flooded with email.

�I�ve been getting thousands of no-subject, blank emails …. 500 of them come every hour, I can�t stop them,� said David S. Peck, in a story from TechCrunch about how he’s being hammered by emails.

This error is not caused by Gmail having gone down briefly today. As noted above, it was a problem from at least this past Monday. However, when Gmail crashed, there was likely a spike in people searching for Gmail on Google, and a rise in clicks on this secondary URL, since the main Gmail link wasn’t working. In turn, Peck likely started getting all these emails.

Why his address? Why someone else’s address earlier this week? If we learn more from Google, we’ll let you know.

Postscript: Google said this is now fixed, sending us this statement:

Due to a technical glitch, some email addresses on public webpages appeared too prominently in search results. We�ve fixed the issue and are sorry for any inconvenience caused.

A judge has determined patent-holding company Vringo is entitled to additional royalties from Google in a patent infringement case involving Google AdWords.

The order stems from a case brought by Vringo subsidiary I/P Engine in 2011 that claimed filtering technology used in Google AdWords violated two of its patents. A jury found in favor of I/P Engine, awarding it $30,496,155 and running royalty payments of 3.5 percent. The case is I/P Engine Inc. v. AOL Inc., 11cv512.

Google claimed to have updated the AdWords system in May 2013 in such a way that the patents were no longer applicable and said it should not be subject to royalty payments after that point.

In a Memorandum Order issued yesterday, U.S. District Judge�Raymond A Jackson disagreed writing, the modified version of AdWords “is nothing more than a colorable variation of the infringing system.” As such Vringo is “entitled to ongoing royalties as long as Defendants continue to use the modified system.”

The 90′s era patents originate from Lycos. Vringo bought the two patents — 6,314,420 entitled “Collaborative/adaptive search engine” and 6,775,664 entitled “Information filter system and method for integrated content-based and collaborative/adaptive feedback queries”– and 6 others in June 2011. It files suit against Google and its customers AOL, Gannett, IAC and Target in September of that year.

Vringo also sued Microsoft in 2013 using the same patents. Microsoft settled with the company.

Matt Kallman, a Google spokesperson told The Washington Post that the “decision further highlights the mischief trolls can make with the patent system.” Google is appealing the ruling.

Google is appealing the original ruling in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (I/P Engine Inc. v. AOL Inc., 14-1233). Google’s Kallman also said Google will likely be “seeking review of today�s decision as well.�

The excerpts below from the memorandum order provide more background on I/P Engine’s original trial argument regarding AdWords’ process for ad serving and the why the court found that the “new AdWords” of post-May 2013 was essentially the same as the “old AdWords” as it relates to the two patents:

At the trial in this case, I/P Engine’s infringement expert, Dr. Ophir Frieder, testified that old AdWords infringed I/P Engine’s patents at multiple points in the process of selecting which ads would be displayed for a given query. Specifically, this occurred at two so-called “disabling” steps and one “promotion” step, all of which occurred prior to the auction for ad space. Each step used a “predicted click-through� rate,” a quality score based on the combination of content and collaborative data. The selection of ads based on this combination was Dr. Frieder’s central theory of infringement at trial. Ads, however, were not selected based only on this predicted click-through rate; instead, that score formed part of the “long term value,” or LTV score, which included data on the quality of the webpage, the minimum bid, and other factors.� For an ad to proceed to the next step, it was required to have an LTV score greater than zero.

The Court has, however, thoroughly reviewed the experts’ descriptions of new AdWords and the ways in which it differs from old AdWords, and is confident that I/P Engine has shown that new AdWords is no more than a colorable variation of old AdWords. Suffice it to say that it is undisputed that new AdWords continues to use a candidate advertisement’s LTV score that includes a predicted click-through rate in the process of choosing which advertisement will ultimately be shown to the individual performing the query.� The only differences between the two systems that are potentially relevant in light of I/P Engine’s theory of infringement at trial is that the LTV score is no longer used at the multiple steps just described, and occurs once at a different point in the process of selecting which advertisements will ultimately be shown to users.

I/P Engine has also proven that new AdWords, like old AdWords, infringes its patents by filtering based on the combination of collaborative and content data.”

The Conductor study showed that there was rich media on the search results page 34% of the time. The breakdown of rich media showed images appear on 28% of search results pages, news 9%, and shopping 1%. You have to keep in mind, rich media in search results is incredibly query-dependent. So, based on the sampling of Conductor’s study, 34% was the number they reached.

88% Of The Search Results Contain 9 Organic Results

88% of SERPs have 9 or more natural search links, with 73% having exactly ten organic results. This shows that while many say the ten blue links are gone, that is, indeed, not the case.

56% Of The Search Results Have 9 Search Ads

Finally, Conductor’s study says 56% of search pages now have 9 or more paid ads. I posted the breakdown of the study below. But, Conductor adds that despite there being so many paid search ads, “eye-tracking studies show that increasingly, searchers are tuning out ads and focusing on organic results.”

Leaving nothing to chance, Apple’s ensured that anyone searching for “Mac” on Google or Bing today, the 30th birthday of the Mac, will know about the anniversary. The company has purchased ads that lead to a special Mac birthday area of the Apple site.

Above is an example of what shows on Google, for a search on “Mac,” an ad saying “Happy Birthday, Mac” and inviting people to “Explore 30 years of innovation on the Mac.” The ad links over to the page at Apple about Macs, which has a pitch for the birthday area:

The birthday area itself has a special video for the Mac’s 30th anniversary (which you can also view on YouTube):

There’s also a timeline of major Mac moments:

Those who go to the Apple site directly will find the entire home page has been taken over for the anniversary:

Over at Bing, there’s a similar ad:

Yahoo, which uses Bing’s ads, also has the Apple ad appearing.

Google, which does special logos for major birthdays and anniversaries, didn’t honor the Mac’s 30th. Nor did Bing, which does custom home page backgrounds for special events.

Google has been on a mission to streamline the look and feel of many of its products over the years. This week, Google announced AdWords would be the next beneficiary of a new design, offering “more screen real estate to the tools and reports you love.”

The company added, “By updating AdWords to the look and feel that we use across Google, you’ll spend less time getting where you want to go in your account, and more time focusing on growing your business.”

Navigation links like billing, help and account settings (formerly “my account”) have moved into the gear icon — the same place important navigational features are placed in other Google products like Gmail.

Google has also moved key campaign information in the dashboard above the fold to minimize scrolling. Now there’s a way to quickly see who is signed in for accounts with multiple users as well.

Plus, Google said there's more white space associated with charts and tables, and they've incorporated softer colors to make it “easier on the eyes.”

Here's a short video by Google on navgating AdWords, which reflects the new changes:

These changes will be rolling out to accounts over the next few weeks.

Google is now dynamically changing the top search menu/filters based on the search query entered by the searcher.

So now, what options you see at the top might differ or be in a different order based on the query you enter into Google’s search box.

A Google spokesperson told us this based on noticing that some Google search filters went missing recently. Google said:

We�re always making changes to Search to help you find the most useful things more easily. Now when you search, the type of results you can select at the top of the page will vary depending on what makes sense for your search.

For example, if you search for �English to Tagalog� you�ll see �Apps� that�ll help you with translation as well as �Books� and �Shopping� in case you�re looking to buy a printed or electronic dictionary.

The truth is, I cannot trigger the “missing” search filters to come up for places, blogs, discussions, recipes, and patents. We had all of those back six months ago and no matter what I search for, those options do not show up. The search tools do change based on my query being, let’s say, recipe related. But the recipe filter does not show up for [fudge brownies].

Here are screen shots of the top menu changing based on the query:

We have asked for further clarification about the missing search filters that we cannot find for our sample queries.

In April, Google dropped the related search filter due to lack of use.

Postscript: Google added that the reason I no longer see some search filters or options is because they are now included in the main web search results. Google said, “While you�ll no longer see the option to filter results to only include Discussions, these types of results will be included in the overall web results.”

Google is now dynamically changing the top search menu/filters based on the search query entered by the searcher.

So now, what options you see at the top might differ or be in a different order based on the query you enter into Google’s search box.

A Google spokesperson told us this based on noticing that some Google search filters went missing recently. Google said:

We�re always making changes to Search to help you find the most useful things more easily. Now when you search, the type of results you can select at the top of the page will vary depending on what makes sense for your search.

For example, if you search for �English to Tagalog� you�ll see �Apps� that�ll help you with translation as well as �Books� and �Shopping� in case you�re looking to buy a printed or electronic dictionary.

The truth is, I cannot trigger the “missing” search filters to come up for places, blogs, discussions, recipes, and patents. We had all of those back six months ago and no matter what I search for, those options do not show up. The search tools do change based on my query being, let’s say, recipe related. But the recipe filter does not show up for [fudge brownies].

Here are screen shots of the top menu changing based on the query:

We have asked for further clarification about the missing search filters that we cannot find for our sample queries.

In April, Google dropped the related search filter due to lack of use.

Postscript: Google added that the reason I no longer see some search filters or options is because they are now included in the main web search results. Google said, “While you�ll no longer see the option to filter results to only include Discussions, these types of results will be included in the overall web results.”

The marketing world has an ironic history of underestimating Apple – remember people dismissing the iPad as nothing more than an overgrown iPod touch? So it's no surprise that there hasn't been more fanfare over the iBeacon.

Apple didn't go out of the way to play up iBeacon in the last World Wide Developer Conference but anyone who's struggled with mobile advertising strategy in general and location–based marketing in particular could see its potential from the start. Now that it is here, it promises to be one of the most promising Apple innovations since the iPad.

The actual debut of iBeacon was also relatively low-key; 254 U.S. Apple stores quietly rolled out the technology this past December. Retailer programs followed soon after and have generated a bit more attention, with app developer InMarket bringing it to 200+ Safeway and Giant Eagle grocery stores across the U.S. and Shopkick announcing a 100+ store program for American Eagle soon after.

Before long, we'll probably be hearing some metrics about these initiatives but for now, industry awareness of what iBeacon really is and why it holds so much promise remains quite low. For the uninitiated, here's what it's all about.

All About iBeacon?

iBeacon is an indoor positioning system that uses the latest version of Bluetooth, Blue Tooth Low Energy (BLE), to relay signals from a base station sensor to a mobile device in its vicinity. The sensor can read information from the device and then send content back to it based on that information.

In terms of function, it's quite similar to the NFC technology that Google has been banking on with Google Wallet. Both are systems that send signals across a short distance from a sensor to a remote device in proximity to it. However, iBeacon has a few distinct advantages over NFC:

Range: NFC is limited to no more than 20 cm (7.87 inches) whereas iBeacon can transmit signals up to 50 m.Ubiquity: NFC is available in a limited array of newer (mostly) Android devices whereas BLE is widely standardized on both Android and iOS platforms.Power usage: BLE generates far less drain on battery life than NFC which greatly enhances its potential for consumer uptake.

The messages that these technologies generate can vary; for the most part they take the form of push notifications, SMS-like messages that are delivered through an app. But they can also take the form of ad-like content delivered into an app interface – think coupons appearing in the Passbook application on your iPhone.

How Will iBeacon be Used?

Both NFC and iBeacon are systems for proximity marketing, something distinct from location–based marketing in that it circumvents the need for a wireless carrier's GPS or triangulation data altogether, relying on instead on machine-to-machine communication. This is beneficial in several ways:

Clarity: Wireless data is often faulty or simply unattainable indoors whereas proximity technologies are consistent and accurate given the close ranges they use to function. You have a far better chance of reaching a consumer when and where you want using proximity vs. geolocation.Connectivity: Geolocation signals vary in quality and coverage from carrier to in any given area. Proximity signals, by circumventing the need for a carrier at all are robust and consistent.Contextualization: Information delivered via proximity marketing can be contextualized based on consumer information within a specific app. For example, an iBeacon message sent to an American Eagle customer could be contextualized based on account information such as past purchases, previous store visits, and wish lists in addition to location.

It will be a while before the initial case studies filter out and even longer before best practices are developed and metrics take shape. But well before 2014 is over, retailers will be asking themselves what their iBeacon strategy is.

What's Search Got to do With it?

The aforementioned iBeacon strategy will be integrated with several key elements of marketing strategy – specifically CRM, social media, merchandizing, and most importantly, search. Certain existing elements of search will be influenced by adoption of this new technology and more traditional real-world models will be augmented by it. For example:

In-store search: Brands will be able to physically map the interior of stores to facilitate finding specific products – no more wandering the aisles of a big box store in a futile search for that special brand of soap, now an X will mark the spot. Or, more likely, a maps-esque blue dot will lead the way. It's also entirely possible that you'll be ushered past (or toward) the brands and products the store most wants you to buy along the way.App-based key search: With iBeacon, brands will finally be able to connect the dots between a consumer performing a search within an app and then actually entering a store. Assuming the user has agreed to accept iBeacon transmissions through a brand's native app, it will actually be possible to follow their post-click, real-world journey, direct them to a product and give them an incentive to buy when they get there. Goodbye, showrooming. Hello, in-store purchase.Web-based keyword search: The web angle remains a bit trickier since iBeacon communicates with a native app vs. the browser. Likewise, device-based tracking IDs like Apple's IFDA and Google's Advertising ID don't yet extend to the browser but it's reasonable to assume that both have long-term plans to do so. It's likely that advertisers will be offered some means of linking their web-based search ads to their native app's advertising ID so that the initial click can be linked to in-store visits via iBeacon, and, with the inevitable adoption of mobile payments, conversions.Why Now and What's Next?

Now that Apple, with its 500+ million iOS devices and 50+ million apps has chosen BLE, the opportunity for mass adoption of proximity marketing is here. Marketers will be able to reach both the high-spending iOS crowd and the larger Android market with scalable, contextual, location-based marketing, and, eventually, payments (there are already whispers of an Apple iWallet patent and the promise of integration with Google wallet is there as well).

If there's one thing that a new form of user behavior needs to take off, it's ease of use and you can bet that Apple and Google engineers are working on a way to make the process of mobile payments linked to iBeacon as simple as possible. By the time iBeacon is fully rolled out and being used at scale (perhaps a year out) you can bet that these wallets with be out as well and consumer adoption of them growing like wildfire.

It's the payments – and loyalty – angles that are most interesting since they will smooth the way to wide-spread adoption of mobile commerce and redemption.

One of the biggest frustrations the industry has faced as mobile usage escalates is connecting the dots between smartphone search and in-store purchases. Now the option to redeem offers and points and actually pay for purchases is likely to be far smoother, easier and available to one and all. And as device identifiers like Apple's IDFA and Google's Advertising ID become more robust and inevitably extended to the browser, it will become easier and easier to connect search behavior to tangible, real-world transactions.

How Do Brands Get Started?

Though Bluetooth can technically be used to send a direct message from device to device, for now, brands will need to have a native app in order to join in the fun.

The latest iOS SDK includes APIs for integrating iBeacon connectivity to your app and 3rd party APIs are being released for Android devices as well. So one of the more interesting side-effects of all this is that brick and mortar brands will have a newly increased pressure on them to develop apps if they have not done so already.

As for the iBeacon transmitters, so far it seems that the initial pilots are happening through direct partnership with Apple – there's no mention of them yet in the Apple Store. But multiple third-party providers like Estimote and Buy iBeacon are popping up fast, selling branded versions of the sensors for reasonable costs that put them within reach for small and medium-sized businesses (though the real cost is in developing the app).

What About Privacy?

So what about the privacy issue? There's certainly the potential for misuse since technically, app developers don't need to get your permission to track your movement using iBeacon.

It's likely that most, if not all, reputable brands will install public permission requests into their newly iBeacon-enabled apps. What's more, the app will not transmit any other personally identifiable information from other apps on your phone or from the phone OS.

The one possible and slightly nefarious possibility is that brands could use your iBeacon-supplied location info (and visit history) to serve ads into an app from third-party partners. It's a given that someone will try.

Users can, of course, turn off Bluetooth (Apple sets it on by default) or turn off location services altogether. But these will be very unpopular options as we become increasingly reliant on location-based services and wearable technologies that depend on Bluetooth to integrate with our other devices.

So no doubt our privacy policies will become more detailed, our tracking more convoluted and our advertising options infinitely more complex.

Brands are going to have to put more thought into how they build apps and consumers, more care into how they use them. But overall, iBeacon is a win-win to both sides.

Consumers will find what they're looking for faster and more efficiently and over time have greater opportunities to save money through sales, incentives, and loyalty programs. Brands will have the tools to finally combat showrooming on a more level playing field.

The marketing world has an ironic history of underestimating Apple – remember people dismissing the iPad as nothing more than an overgrown iPod touch? So it's no surprise that there hasn't been more fanfare over the iBeacon.

Apple didn't go out of the way to play up iBeacon in the last World Wide Developer Conference but anyone who's struggled with mobile advertising strategy in general and location–based marketing in particular could see its potential from the start. Now that it is here, it promises to be one of the most promising Apple innovations since the iPad.

The actual debut of iBeacon was also relatively low-key; 254 U.S. Apple stores quietly rolled out the technology this past December. Retailer programs followed soon after and have generated a bit more attention, with app developer InMarket bringing it to 200+ Safeway and Giant Eagle grocery stores across the U.S. and Shopkick announcing a 100+ store program for American Eagle soon after.

Before long, we'll probably be hearing some metrics about these initiatives but for now, industry awareness of what iBeacon really is and why it holds so much promise remains quite low. For the uninitiated, here's what it's all about.

All About iBeacon?

iBeacon is an indoor positioning system that uses the latest version of Bluetooth, Blue Tooth Low Energy (BLE), to relay signals from a base station sensor to a mobile device in its vicinity. The sensor can read information from the device and then send content back to it based on that information.

In terms of function, it's quite similar to the NFC technology that Google has been banking on with Google Wallet. Both are systems that send signals across a short distance from a sensor to a remote device in proximity to it. However, iBeacon has a few distinct advantages over NFC:

Range: NFC is limited to no more than 20 cm (7.87 inches) whereas iBeacon can transmit signals up to 50 m.Ubiquity: NFC is available in a limited array of newer (mostly) Android devices whereas BLE is widely standardized on both Android and iOS platforms.Power usage: BLE generates far less drain on battery life than NFC which greatly enhances its potential for consumer uptake.

The messages that these technologies generate can vary; for the most part they take the form of push notifications, SMS-like messages that are delivered through an app. But they can also take the form of ad-like content delivered into an app interface – think coupons appearing in the Passbook application on your iPhone.

How Will iBeacon be Used?

Both NFC and iBeacon are systems for proximity marketing, something distinct from location–based marketing in that it circumvents the need for a wireless carrier's GPS or triangulation data altogether, relying on instead on machine-to-machine communication. This is beneficial in several ways:

Clarity: Wireless data is often faulty or simply unattainable indoors whereas proximity technologies are consistent and accurate given the close ranges they use to function. You have a far better chance of reaching a consumer when and where you want using proximity vs. geolocation.Connectivity: Geolocation signals vary in quality and coverage from carrier to in any given area. Proximity signals, by circumventing the need for a carrier at all are robust and consistent.Contextualization: Information delivered via proximity marketing can be contextualized based on consumer information within a specific app. For example, an iBeacon message sent to an American Eagle customer could be contextualized based on account information such as past purchases, previous store visits, and wish lists in addition to location.

It will be a while before the initial case studies filter out and even longer before best practices are developed and metrics take shape. But well before 2014 is over, retailers will be asking themselves what their iBeacon strategy is.

What's Search Got to do With it?

The aforementioned iBeacon strategy will be integrated with several key elements of marketing strategy – specifically CRM, social media, merchandizing, and most importantly, search. Certain existing elements of search will be influenced by adoption of this new technology and more traditional real-world models will be augmented by it. For example:

In-store search: Brands will be able to physically map the interior of stores to facilitate finding specific products – no more wandering the aisles of a big box store in a futile search for that special brand of soap, now an X will mark the spot. Or, more likely, a maps-esque blue dot will lead the way. It's also entirely possible that you'll be ushered past (or toward) the brands and products the store most wants you to buy along the way.App-based key search: With iBeacon, brands will finally be able to connect the dots between a consumer performing a search within an app and then actually entering a store. Assuming the user has agreed to accept iBeacon transmissions through a brand's native app, it will actually be possible to follow their post-click, real-world journey, direct them to a product and give them an incentive to buy when they get there. Goodbye, showrooming. Hello, in-store purchase.Web-based keyword search: The web angle remains a bit trickier since iBeacon communicates with a native app vs. the browser. Likewise, device-based tracking IDs like Apple's IFDA and Google's Advertising ID don't yet extend to the browser but it's reasonable to assume that both have long-term plans to do so. It's likely that advertisers will be offered some means of linking their web-based search ads to their native app's advertising ID so that the initial click can be linked to in-store visits via iBeacon, and, with the inevitable adoption of mobile payments, conversions.Why Now and What's Next?

Now that Apple, with its 500+ million iOS devices and 50+ million apps has chosen BLE, the opportunity for mass adoption of proximity marketing is here. Marketers will be able to reach both the high-spending iOS crowd and the larger Android market with scalable, contextual, location-based marketing, and, eventually, payments (there are already whispers of an Apple iWallet patent and the promise of integration with Google wallet is there as well).

If there's one thing that a new form of user behavior needs to take off, it's ease of use and you can bet that Apple and Google engineers are working on a way to make the process of mobile payments linked to iBeacon as simple as possible. By the time iBeacon is fully rolled out and being used at scale (perhaps a year out) you can bet that these wallets with be out as well and consumer adoption of them growing like wildfire.

It's the payments – and loyalty – angles that are most interesting since they will smooth the way to wide-spread adoption of mobile commerce and redemption.

One of the biggest frustrations the industry has faced as mobile usage escalates is connecting the dots between smartphone search and in-store purchases. Now the option to redeem offers and points and actually pay for purchases is likely to be far smoother, easier and available to one and all. And as device identifiers like Apple's IDFA and Google's Advertising ID become more robust and inevitably extended to the browser, it will become easier and easier to connect search behavior to tangible, real-world transactions.

How Do Brands Get Started?

Though Bluetooth can technically be used to send a direct message from device to device, for now, brands will need to have a native app in order to join in the fun.

The latest iOS SDK includes APIs for integrating iBeacon connectivity to your app and 3rd party APIs are being released for Android devices as well. So one of the more interesting side-effects of all this is that brick and mortar brands will have a newly increased pressure on them to develop apps if they have not done so already.

As for the iBeacon transmitters, so far it seems that the initial pilots are happening through direct partnership with Apple – there's no mention of them yet in the Apple Store. But multiple third-party providers like Estimote and Buy iBeacon are popping up fast, selling branded versions of the sensors for reasonable costs that put them within reach for small and medium-sized businesses (though the real cost is in developing the app).

What About Privacy?

So what about the privacy issue? There's certainly the potential for misuse since technically, app developers don't need to get your permission to track your movement using iBeacon.

It's likely that most, if not all, reputable brands will install public permission requests into their newly iBeacon-enabled apps. What's more, the app will not transmit any other personally identifiable information from other apps on your phone or from the phone OS.

The one possible and slightly nefarious possibility is that brands could use your iBeacon-supplied location info (and visit history) to serve ads into an app from third-party partners. It's a given that someone will try.

Users can, of course, turn off Bluetooth (Apple sets it on by default) or turn off location services altogether. But these will be very unpopular options as we become increasingly reliant on location-based services and wearable technologies that depend on Bluetooth to integrate with our other devices.

So no doubt our privacy policies will become more detailed, our tracking more convoluted and our advertising options infinitely more complex.

Brands are going to have to put more thought into how they build apps and consumers, more care into how they use them. But overall, iBeacon is a win-win to both sides.

Consumers will find what they're looking for faster and more efficiently and over time have greater opportunities to save money through sales, incentives, and loyalty programs. Brands will have the tools to finally combat showrooming on a more level playing field.

Google has announced the formal rollout of a test that some searchers have been seeing for a few days now — a test that associates a Knowledge Graph popup with certain web pages in desktop search results.

The popup adds more information about certain search results, which sounds like it should be good for searchers. But, as I’ll show below, the implementation may not be great for site owners.

“You’ll see this extra information when a site is widely recognized as notable online, when there is enough information to show or when the content may be handy for you,” wrote Google’s Bart Niechwiej in today’s blog post.

Since it’s Knowledge Graph data, the popups rely heavily on Wikipedia. In my searching, I didn’t see a single example that didn’t have data from Wikipedia.

The data provides background on the website listed in the search result, and it appears in a small popup window that’s accessible from a clickable link on the second line of the result. Here’s a sample that I noticed on a recent search:

In that example, each boxed area — “Wikipedia,” “Toronto Sun” and “Canoe.ca” is clickable and shows the Knowledge Graph popup.

Good News Or Bad News For Site Owners?

For site owners, this could be seen as a welcome addition because it adds extra information about the website and may encourage users to click the search result. There’s maybe also an element of accomplishment — i.e., “we’re important enough to get this special search result feature.”

On the other hand, as the screenshot above shows, the popup adds up to three extra links to the search result that don’t go to your website:

The avatar/logo links to the site’s Google+ pageThe “Wikipedia” credit at the end of the text links to the Wikipedia page about the websiteThe “Owned by” text links to a Google search (in this case, for “Qu�becor M�dia”)

If this becomes a popular feature with searchers, it could lead some to click away from the actual web page that Google included in its search results.

In any case, Google says it expects to show more information about more websites as it expands the Knowledge Graph.

Google’s John Mueller announced on the Google Webmaster blog this morning that the Google Webmaster Tools team has updated the crawl errors report to show errors on the final URL of the redirect, as opposed to the origin URL of the redirect.

What this means is that Google is now showing the errors on the final destination URL instead of the redirecting URL. This should make it easier for webmasters to diagnose issues in their crawl error report, because it makes it easier for the webmaster to locate the page with the error.

In the past, Google would have reported the error observed at the end under URL A. Now, Google is reporting the error on URL B, as illustrated in the redirect graphic above.

The errors will also be visible in the total error counts for some websites.

Do you know what your employees are saying about you and your company online? Do you have a clear social media policy? Do you do any form of social training for your employees? Do you monitor to see what they're saying?

Do you have any idea how your employees are representing your company on social networks? Do you know how to respond when you encounter an employee created social media problem?

If the answer to any of the questions above is no, then read on.

Unfortunately the chances are that you have at least one employee with a common sense deficiency. Now in most cases that won't be your director of corporate communications, typically the person tasked with fixing issues that impact the reputation of the corporation, but in the recent case of the now former IAC employee Justine Sacco, that was exactly what happened. Heading on a trip to South Africa in December she tweeted the following.

Whatever her intent was, including the text "just kidding" in her tweet didn't make it a joke in the eyes of many people, instead it created an online furor that ended with her seeking new employmentfairly shortly after her plane landed in South Africa.

Sacco is far from being the first employee looking for a new position as a result of social media, nor will she be the last. From the lacoste salesman fired for Instagramming a picture of his paycheck, to the school teacher fired for tweetingpictures of her partaking of certain substances and in a state of partial undress.

A search of Instagram shows the general dissatisfaction that a number of people have with their current jobs, through some of the hashtags in frequent use:

Does this really matter if they're not naming your company? Is there really any harm? Well, yes.

Other employees are most likely friends, and seeing such posts may impact their morale negatively. If clients know your employees they may well do a search and find these posts or befriend them on social networks and see them directly in their feed, which may impact their future interactions with your firm.

What about if your employees are foolish enough to actually name your company in their posts? Suddenly people searching for "Foodland" may come across this picture that describes the company as "Hell". Hardly a positive employee testimonial.

What about when your employee tweets that they want to do something illegal?

Or threatens violence?

Or says something patently offensive?

Or tweets a racist picture?

Obviously none of those situations are acceptable, and you need to ensure that you have several things in place before any of these happen to give you the best opportunity to address the situation in the most appropriate manner.

The Social Media Policy

You need to have a social media policy. This policy can be as formal as you'd like, detailing acceptable and unacceptable behavior, and spelling out punishments and penalties for transgressions. Or alternatively it can be short and to the point along the lines of "Don't be stupid" a la The New York Times.

Also, make sure that all of your employees are aware of said policy. Give training where applicable, and talk to them about what doing something stupid could mean for them and the company.

Basically help your employees understand that whatever they put online, whether they believe it to be protected or private, isn't. Let them know that any one of their "friends" can screenshot a protected tweet, a private Facebook post, or a SnapChat message and share it with a wider audience than they intended.

You should also have, as a part of this, a disaster plan. Should an employee come across a potential issue they should know how to respond, or whether they need to escalate it, and who they should be passing it up to, to formulate the company response.

Make sure to involve your legal team in the drafting of this document to ensure that it obeys the letter of the law in your locality.

Monitoring

You need then need to find out what's being said as soon as possible. It isn't going to be feasible for you to monitor the various feeds of each and every employee on each and every network. But what you should be doing, as a matter of course, is monitoring your brand terms.

You need to make sure that you have some mechanism in place that allows someone at your company to identify when there's a potential reputation management issue. At the very least, during your regular company operating hours (note to airlines, your planes fly outside of 9-5, so you should probably monitor outside of those hours).

The Response

Each situation is different, so you want to analyze the current state of affairs, and determine whether things have been taken out of context, or whether there truly is an issue that needs to be addressed. You then need to get ahead of it as soon as possible as there will generally be an article or three written on the usual online sites.

Be as open and honest as possible. Explain the situation as best as you can at that point, let your customers / those offended know the steps that you're taking to rectify the situation. Whether that's a simple apology, all the way up to the termination of the offending employee.

Don't feel though that you have to offer the final response at Internet speed. Just a simple "This situation is unacceptable and does not reflect the beliefs of our company, an internal investigation is underway" lets people know that you're taking it seriously while not necessarily rushing to the finish line without due consideration for the facts.

The Post Mortem

After the dust has settled, go back and review the situation.

Did the operating procedures that you had in place work? Were there disconnects? Could the situation have been handled better? Were conclusions unfairly jumped to in order to provide that quick response?

Take what you learn from this situation and use it to evolve your social media policy/training.

Final Thoughts

Just remember that the genie is out of the bottle. In most cases you can't stop your employees from using social media, it's a part of many people's everyday lives these days.

What you can do is make your employees think about what they're doing when they're communicating on a mass scale with people. If they understand that their actions can have a detrimental effect on the company, and perhaps their position within the company, then they'll think again about posting something that may do so.

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We've been seeing the writing on the wall for quite some time when it comes to the viability of guest blogging as an SEO tactic. As the quality declined and the prevalence of poor quality content through guest blogging increased, it was only a matter of time before Google would need to do something about the problem.

Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts, posting on his personal blog, advises webmasters to no longer use guest blogging as a way to gain links. Also, if you accept a blog post, make sure it's written by someone you're willing to vouch for in terms of quality and credibility (this also applies to a site that you submit blog posts to).

Okay, I'm calling it: if you're using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it's become a more and more spammy practice, and if you're doing a lot of guest blogging then you're hanging out with really bad company.History of Guest Blogging

Guest blogging used to almost be seen as a badge of honor for the ones writing the guest post, especially when a high-profile website asked for or invited others to guest blog. In essence, it was a big deal when a high-profile website thought your content was awesome enough or that you were important enough that they would republish something you wrote on their site.

Back in the day, guest blogging used to be a respectable thing, much like getting a coveted, respected author to write the introduction of your book.

It's for this reason, it was a strategy that many websites employed, not necessarily as a link building strategy but rather so they didn't always have to always produce their own high quality content, as well as introducing their readers to writers or topics that they thought their readers would enjoy.

When you look at guest blogging for SEO overall, while it actually did take a while for guest blogging to really kick off as a SEO technique, and slightly longer before we saw just masses of spam being churned out by often fake guest bloggers, it had been viewed as something that was great for both SEO and the site. Guest blogging for legitimate reasons was very popular for site owners, authors, and readers.

While this worked well for a period of time, it wasn't long before this tactic was compromised as a way to cheaply build links.

Several years ago, I would have said that the default answer when someone proposed doing a guest blog post would "yes." However, with the rapid rise of low-quality or spammy sites trying to build tons of links via guest blogging, so I'd say that the default answer now should be "no." Of course, if you know the person writing the blog post well, or want to vouch for them, or if the author is happy to nofollow their links, then that changes the calculation–it's much more likely that someone is looking for a new audience instead of a way to get keyword-rich links.

Again, just like links, you should lean toward writers you can personally vouch for.

The Decline of Quality & the Rise of Spam

The quality has definitely declined over the past few years. Guest blogging has caused a tremendous influx of low quality content disguised as a guest blog. Worse, accepting these guest blog posts can tarnish a site owner's credibility, as most visitors expect the owner of a site to vouch for the quality of its own content.

It has also become much more prevalent for "authors" to offer to pay for their blog post to appear on what they perceive as high quality sites. Many site owners think, "wow, easy money!" But really, the authors are simply disguising paid links in the context of a guest blog post – and usually the content is poorly written for very low cost, or is simply stolen from other websites.

So stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it's just gotten too spammy. In general I wouldn't recommend accepting a guest blog post unless you are willing to vouch for someone personally or know them well. Likewise, I wouldn't recommend relying on guest posting, guest blogging sites, or guest blogging SEO as a linkbuilding strategy.Why Now?

Many have been expecting that guest blogging would be hit hard, and it is somewhat surprising that it has taken this long. Cutts has been warning about guest blogging throughout the past year, with several webmaster help videos on the topic of how to guest blog without spamming. Many saw this as a sign Google was about to put the final nail in the coffin of guest blogging for the vast majority of cases.

However it seems that even Cutts agrees that his message wasn't coming across clear enough to the SEO community with those videos. So this blog post definitely makes it a lot more clear and concise about the issues with guest blogging and why he is suggesting it no longer be done for SEO purposes.

@MichelleDLowery the nuanced ways that I said it in my last 2-3 videos didn't seem to be getting the message across clearly enough.

In other words, despite the official Google webmaster help posting videos regarding the dangers of guest blogging, many either weren't paying attention or were outright ignoring the signs.

Guest Blogging Hurting Uneducated Site Owners

Another side effect of guest blogging was innocent webmasters being suckered into posting guest blog posts simply because spammers promote how guest blogs give their site's "freshness" and "free content" yet obviously they don't reveal the potential consequences of doing it.

Cutts feels that innocent site owners are getting brought down because they don't understand the negatives of poor quality guest blog posts when they get approached by a spammer. So these websites are getting penalized because they get convinced by these guest bloggers that their site would actually improve with all these guest blogs, when in fact all they are is disguised link schemes.

halcyondaze, we see a lot of business owners with small blogs getting tricked by spammers. If you're doing really high-quality guest blogging to get exposure or branding, that's great, but the majority of guest blogging offers these days are sliding into scuzzier and spammier areas.

stephp, it's great that you sound like a high-quality contributor, but my intent was to highlight the issues around the hundreds of awful spam emails that you mentioned receiving. I've seen a lot of business owners fall for them. :(

Unfortunately, it's hard to reach and educate website owners who aren't involved in the SEO community – as we clearly saw with the number of site owners receiving warnings for unnatural linking penalties due to practices they had no idea went against Google's webmaster guidelines.

There are certainly reasonable and valid reasons to consider guest posts, but regular site owners should be aware of the risks as well. I was talking to a small business owner recently and she was delighted that someone wanted to write a guest blog post. She thought that her small blog was being validated, when in fact it was being targeted.

And just like bad links, otherwise great sites whose only flaw was being owned by someone not familiar with the ins and outs of SEO could easily fall victim to these guest bloggers.

At first, they're thrilled that someone would want to contribute an article. Not everyone realizes that if someone contacts you out of the blue offering an article, it's good to be skeptical.Is There Still a Place for High Quality Guest Blogging?

However the definitely are many cases where guest blogging can be high-quality and can be useful to a site's visitors, and Cutts doesn't want to discourage this.

There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.). Those reasons existed way before Google and they'll continue into the future. And there are absolutely some fantastic, high-quality guest bloggers out there. I changed the title of this post to make it more clear that I'm talking about guest blogging for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.

Cutts also posted on Hacker News, in response to an author who was commenting that he had invited some good quality guest bloggers to post on his site while he was going to be unable to do so himself. Cutts said this is actually a perfect example of where it is appropriate to allow guest blogging and why they don't want to discourage this type of guest blog posts.

Hey cstross, I almost added a link to your blog post at http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/01/introduc... as an example of someone doing it right--you've clearly put a lot of thought into people who can add value for your blog's audience. You're at the very tip of the head in terms of quality--most of the scuzzy people take advantage of massive numbers of small, not-very-savvy bloggers who will throw up any submission they receive. So I wouldn't worry at all, and I apologize if my post came across too broadly.

The majority of webmasters who are soliciting great quality content, from authors they know and can vouch for, are not the ones targeted by this guest blogging crackdown. Just think of it from the perspective of where Google wants you to basically say "Yes, the quality of this author, content and links I can personally vouch for."

One anonymous (and somewhat trollish) comment left on Cutts' blog was by someone who took exception to the fact that Cutts accepted a guest post on this blog before, albeit from Vanessa Fox who worked for the Google Sitemaps team at the time.

Spam and Should be Banned both Websites. Linking and Receiving. Thanks

Cutts turned it around into a teaching moment to say that those webmasters who can't distinguish quality guest blogs and those that aren't should avoid guest blogging entirely.

Nope, this is actually an example of high-quality guest blogging that remains valuable. I know Vanessa and I'm happy to vouch for her. Her intent was to inform an audience, not to get links or get PageRank. And if you can't tell the difference, then you should avoid accepting guest posts on your site.

And when you go and view that guest blog post in question, it actually went above and beyond proper linking for guest blog posts because the post only links to Google's own sites as well as a single link to a Pubcon conference session, despite there being the opportunity to link to additional sites.

What About Guest Blogging for Traffic, Exposure & Branding (Not SEO)?

People need to see quality guest blogging and how it can be useful to build traffic, which many people seem to be missing with this announcement. Ryan Jones, in a guest blog for Outspoken Media, said that guest blogging can still work, just in a different way from how most people are using it today.

Guest blogging can still work. You wouldn't turn down a column on CNN or an editorial in the Huffington Post if they said you couldn't have a dofollow link would you? Of course not, because those places send traffic – and that's the key. It's about the audience, not the HTML.

At the core of any SEO marketing strategy, one of those goals is simply to get traffic. It is just that now webmasters need to look at guest blogging as simply a vehicle to get the direct referral traffic, to build up a company's brand awareness and not about what it will do to help further their rankings in Google. Many people simply forget that the success of a link, regardless of whether it is nofollowed or not, can also be measured in how much direct traffic that link generates.

Look at your metrics for guest blogs you have done in the past and measure the performance of that link outside of passed PageRank. Investigate how those direct referral traffic is actually performing for you, in terms of page views, bounce rates, conversions, and revenue. You could be surprised with how direct traffic from some sites performs when compared to search referrals. However everyone is just focusing on the negative aspects of guest blogging being dead and how it affects SEO.

Cutts did update his post to say that there are still many reasons why some guest blogging is good. But guest blogging as an SEO strategy should not be utilized

There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.). Those reasons existed way before Google and they'll continue into the future. And there are absolutely some fantastic, high-quality guest bloggers out there. I changed the title of this post to make it more clear that I'm talking about guest blogging for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.

Guest blogging is still viable for traffic, branding, exposure. So it is still worthwhile for authors to reach out for guest blogging, provided it's high quality content (and it probably is in your best interest to suggesting nofollow links, or link to a Twitter account, Google+ page or Facebook page instead). Think of blog posting as audience and not links.

I agree that some guest blog posts can be a good way to get exposure to a new audience. I just wanted to highlight that guest blogging as a whole has gotten pretty spammy at this point.Is This Bad News for Multiple Author Blogs?

Cutts stressed that Google isn't planning to target blogs such as Boing Boing, which regularly uses multiple authors in their blogging strategy. While not all multiple blogger sites are high quality, many of them are among the top websites and are read regularly by hundreds of thousands of readers.

I'm also not talking about multi-author blogs. High-quality multi-author blogs like Boing Boing have been around since the beginning of the web, and they can be compelling, wonderful, and useful.

So if your blog relies on multiple authors, you don't need to worry, unless some of those authors are producing poor or suspect content, something which the site editor should be watching for before publishing.

Google is targeting the many low-quality sites that employ guest blogging as their link building strategy, without being concerned about quality of the content or the appropriateness of the content on a particular site.

That said, it's always a good idea for a site owner employing multiple authors to regularly do quality audits on the writers and ensure that the quality is living up to your standards in terms of content and to also check the quality of any outgoing links. There definitely seems to be a higher incidence of bloggers on high profile multi-blogger sites to try and sneak in paid links, so they can make some extra income on the side. Unfortunately this definitely can have negative effects on the site, especially if someone targets those links and outs the site to Google.

The Role of Nofollow and Guest Blogging

Some webmasters were concerned that high quality guest blogging, even with no follow in place on the outgoing links, was going to be targeted as well. But Cutts reiterated that as long as links are nofollowed, there is no impact on PageRank, and it becomes a nonissue.

If the links are nofollowed, then they don't affect PageRank, so it would be outside the scope of my team at that point. A high-quality guest post with nofollowed links can still be a good way to get exposure to a new audience, branding, etc.

As with any link you place on your site going to an external sites, think about whether you would vouch for the quality of the link. If you have any reason to distrust it, then definitely go ahead and place a nofollow on that link.

The same applies to guest blogs. If you have any reason to distrust the links in the guest blog, just make a practice always nofollow them. Again, check the quality and originality of anything before you publish.

Does Google Have the Right to Tell Bloggers What to Do?

Some people feel that Google has no right to tell them how to solicit content for their sites or dictate what types of content you can publish on your own site or even what types of SEO tactics you can use.

Ann Smarty, who is one of the top experts on guest blogging, a guest blogging consultant, and the owner of MyGuestBlog feels the same.

If someone likes your content and wants to publish it and reference you, what's broken here?

Nothing…

If someone wants to contribute to your blog and you LOVE what they have to say? Do you need to be on your own because Google wants you to be alone?

No…

You want to depend on Google, good luck with that.

You want to be heard, then screw Google and keep doing the legit things you can – to get heard.

In that regard, it's also Google's prerogative to rank or not rank sites based on a wide variety of parameters, including guest blogging. So any webmaster can choose to ignore Google's guidelines, but they will have to face the consequences if and when they find themselves on the receiving end of a spam warning in Google Webmaster Tools.

Although Google isn't the only search engine in the game, they are definitely the most dominant in terms of search market share in North America. At the end of the day it is a webmaster's choice whether they want to follow the Google webmaster guidelines, as it is Google's choice to decide whether they want to display your website or not in their search results.

Hey Gareth, I think I've always been clear that webmasters can do whatever they want on their own site. But I've also tried to be clear that I believe Google has the right to defend our search results from low-quality or spam results in our opinion. So when I do a post like this, I'm trying to provide guidance on the sort of behavior or activity that Google would prefer not to reward. From where I'm sitting, there's enough spam taking place under the rubric of "guest blogging" that I wanted to provide people with a heads up.

But you can always do whatever you like on your website, in the same way that Google is able to decide not to return a website in our search results if we believe it should rank lower or shouldn't be returned.

Blame Matt?

It didn't take long for marketers to raise their virtual pitchforks and attack Cutts for killing off something that so many people were using, whether they were using it for good or for evil. After all, anytime Google kills off the SEO marketing tactic, they have to learn or discover the next big SEO thing. Just like we saw the rise and fall of link bait, links in widgets, and the popularity of directory links, this can be added to the list of "past SEO techniques."

In Jones' post, he said that despite many people blaming Cutts for ruining guest blogging, it actually wasn't Cutts who ruined it. It was SEO practitioners. Cutts was merely the messenger.

The reason Google is taking action on guest posting is because we ruined it. We ruined it the same way we ruined meta keywords, and directories, and press releases, and blogrolls, and widgets, and infographics, and link exchanges, and article submissions, and forums, and comments, and wikipedia, and (on second thought I won't mention this tactic, it still works,) and reviews, and ratings, and Pinterest, and, well you get the picture.

We ruined guest posting just like we ruined everything that came before it and just like we'll probably ruin whatever comes after it. It's moments like this I'm glad Twitter isn't a ranking factor, because I'm sure we'd ruin that too.

SEO professionals will blame Cutts for whatever the next commonly known SEO technique that gains mass popularity that ends out being targeted by the spam team. But smart marketers have already moved on from any SEO technique that gains mass popularity and move onto the next thing, because they know it is a matter of time before gets taken down.

Now What?

What should webmasters do now that clearly guest blogging as an SEO tactic is dead? Even though this particular strategy no longer works from a SEO or Google perspective, it still works from a traffic perspective, Jones also noted:

Link building leads to ranking. Ranking leads to more traffic. That's always how I've viewed it, yet some of us got so caught up in the link building tactics and ranking metrics that we forgot traffic was the actual goal. So yeah, these tactics may be dead from a link building, Google manipulating, Pagerank point of view – but if you approach them solely from a "send me more visitors" point of view, then they remain strong and viable.

Blogging isn't dead. It's simply a specific blogging method to produce mass quantities of a natural links through guest posts that is dead. And people are moving on to viable SEO techniques that have yet to be targeting or that have yet to hit the spam team's radar.

SEO Takeaways

Guest blogging still has its place in the online marketing ecosystem, and likely always will. But it has shifted from being a source of link generation to simply being a tool for branding, traffic, and exposure.

Will we see more frequent penalties related to guest blogging? While most of the applicable penalties would fall under unnatural linking, we could see Google targeting sites and blogs that host poor quality blog post with bad outgoing links.

Does your site have a lot of guest blog content on it? Now would be a pretty good time to do a content site audits and employ plenty of nofollow links on any guest blog posts of questionable quality you have accepted previously, outside of those written by people you can personally vouch for. Just as we've seen Google apply penalties to things that have been done previously to guideline changes, we will most certainly see Google going back in targeting the use low-quality guest blog posts.

You should neither shy away from accepting great quality guest blog posts, nor should you shy away from offering blog posts yourself. But do it strictly for branding and exposure, not for SEO, going forward.

Main Image Credit: I am marlon/Flickr

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It's just under two weeks until the Super Bowl 48, when football fans will see whether the Denver Broncos or Seattle Seahawks will take home the championship, and we'll see which Super Bowl commercials score big with viewers.

Based on new data released by Unruly Media, digital marketers now know that 60 percent of the most shared Super Bowl ads of all time were launched before Super Bowl Sunday. In fact, both football fans and digital marketers can now get a sneak peek of some of this year's Big Game ads on the YouTube Ad Blitz pregame gallery.

That's a lot of information to digest. So, let's divide this story into two parts.

Super Bowl Ad Stats

Unruly's new data also shows digital marketers that Super Bowl 2013 video ads attracted almost twice as many shares online as the previous year. The marketing technology company also found the number of video shares has grown 30 times in the last three years.

In fact, the top 10 most shared ads from Super Bowl 2013 generated a total of 10.2 million shares across Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere – an 89 percent increase from 2012 (5.4 million), and a substantial uplift from the 355,325 shares the top 10 commercials managed in 2010.

Unruly also created an infographic, "Super Bowl: 10 Facts Every Brand Should Know", which revealed these stats:

The most shares (3.3 million) from Super Bowl 2013 were recorded on Super Bowl Monday (February 4) – twice as many as the next biggest day, February 5 (1.6 million shares) and nine times bigger than the number of shares recorded on Super Bowl Sunday.The average length of the top 10 Super Bowl ads more than doubled (112 percent) from 2010-2013, from 42 seconds to 89 seconds.The average share rate (the percentage of viewers who also shared the ads) of Super Bowl ads nearly doubled between 2012 and 2013. In 2012, it took 57 views to generate one share, in 2013, it took 31 views.3 of the top 10 most shared Super Bowl ads of all time are movie trailers - ("Fast 5", "Fast and Furious 6", and "Star Trek Into Darkness").7 of the top 20 most shared ads from Super Bowl 2013 were supported by teasers.The most shared ad of all time is a Super Bowl ad – "The Force - Volkswagen Commercial" (5.2 million shares).

Unruly has also created a Super Bowl 2014 Playbook, offering insight and tips on how brands can make their content more contagious – even with less than two weeks to go. For example, one of the plays recommends: "Have a Game Plan for Agile In-Game Marketing."

According to Unruly, "The Super Bowl catapulted the real time marketing initiative forward in 2013. While Oreo used text, images and a sense of humor, this year, we may see socially imaginative marketers using Vine and Instagram Video engage with audiences. Have content prepared ahead of time or 'par-baked' ready to be launched during key moments in the Big Game. Feature your product; for example, film a score in jelly beans or write out your hashtag in dancing Wheat Thins. Heineken has done this well in British soccer matches. With 'planned agility' brands can make a splash, join the conversation and BE the conversation with video in Super Bowl XLVIII. We have the advance notice – now's the time to film real chili peppers re-creating the Red Hot Chili Peppers' halftime act and featuring your products!"

Super Bowl Pre-Game Commercials

Both football fans and digital marketers can check out the Ad Blitz channel to see "DORITOS - Crash The Super Bowl 2014 - Finalists Announced."

Or, they can watch Intuit's "The Top 4 are Revealed!"

Or, they can check out Pepsi's "#Halftime America with Lee Brice."

In addition to these pre-game teasers, football fans and digital marketers will also be able to vote postgame for their favorite commercials from their laptops, smartphones, or tablets. And since Google Chromecast was a popular stocking stuffer at Christmas, fans will also be voting from their smart TVs.

As Leena El-omar, YouTube Sports and Auto Programs, said in a post on YouTube's Official Blog, "It's clear how much you love watching and sharing these commercials on YouTube. In 2013, you watched Big Game ads more than 265M times for over 3.2M hours--that's the equivalent of watching 800,000 Big Game broadcasts!"

Nevertheless, Search Engine Watch wants to warn digital marketers that these Super Bowl commercials will be interrupted from time to time by a Big Game on Sunday, Feb. 2, 2014. It appears that there are a lot of football fans who are interested in watching that, too.

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In 2013, Google removed 350 million bad AdWords ads as part of its efforts to prevent abuse of AdWords by both advertisers and AdSense publishers, although unfortunately they don't detail much about why those particular ads were removed.

In 2012, Google reported killing 224 million bad ads.

The most common reasons ads tend to get removed are for things like products that violates AdWords terms, ad copy issues (such as using all caps or multiple punctuation marks), or having a display URL that doesn't match the destination URL (such as the case of affiliate ads).

Google makes a special mention of their battle against counterfeiters, which is likely in part because of the agreement multiple ad agencies, including Google AdWords, made with the White House last summer to curb the amount of advertising of copyrights infringing and counterfeit goods.

The number of complaints about counterfeiters advertising on AdWords dropped 85 percent in 2012 and another 78 percent in 2013. Any attempts to market counterfeit goods on AdWords decreased by 47 percent in 2012 and 82 percent 2013, showing that it's becoming clear to counterfeiters that they are being thwarted with their AdWords attempts.

Interestingly, the number of advertisers Google removed from the AdWords network dropped significantly from this year over last year's numbers. Google disabled more than 850,000 advertisers in 2012, but that number dropped to 270,000 in 2013. Google attributed this to their safety screenings catching some of these types of advertisers, and going to other "less-secure" advertising networks for their ads.

The role of AdSense publishers within the Google advertising ecosystem was discussed, with Google blacklisting over 200,000 pages on publisher sites. Also, Google disapproved more than 3 million attempts to join the AdSense network, which shows they are definitely trying to tighten up publisher quality within the network. Of the 250,000 publishers removed for various policy violations, 5,000 were due to violating copyright policies, likely from copying content or scraping from other sites.

Something else that is interesting is that there's been discussion on the Webmaster World forums where people are seeing huge uptick in the number of invalid clicks, both from the advertiser perspective and the publisher perspective. We don't know if it's because Google has recently busted some sort of network abuse, if they are tightening up some of the invalid click variables, or a combination of the two. However the display network was mentioned as a definite source of an increase in the number of invalid clicks.

For more factoids about Google and how they deal with both bad advertisers and ad publishers, they created an infographic with more to tidbits:

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We've previously covered a few basics for pivot tables, a powerful Excel tool which helps digital marketers organize and understand data. Today we're going a half-step beyond the basics of setting up a pivot table, by exposing "must-know skills" for digital marketers.

You must know how to use these two essentials in order to get a different perspective on your marketing data through the pivot table function:

Summarizing DataCalculated Fields

If you've been using pivot tables for years, you'll still probably find a few "ah-ha" moments here, like how to get rid of the pesky "GETPIVOTDATA()" formula.

1. Summarize Data: The First Step, and Often First MIstake

You poured data into a pivot table. Now what? The very first thing you must do is make sure the data is summarized correctly.

There are several ways to summarize your data, but "Sum" and "Count" are most common in digital marketing. Here's how they're commonly used:

"Sum" is used for data like visits, revenue, conversions, clicks, spend, and impressions."Count" can be used for counting the number of keywords, pages, geographic locations, or campaigns.

For search marketers, the most common mistake is summarizing data using the "Average" function in pivot tables. Instead of "Average", we actually need to use a feature in Excel called Calculated Fields.

TIP: Take a closer look at "Average" in pivot tables.

So why doesn't "Average" work? Let's walk through a simple scenario comparing how using "Average" reports vastly different data.

We have two keywords in our ad group; a branded term and a generic term. One keyword has lots of impressions and a lower CTR, the other has fewer impressions but a high CTR. See the example below:

To get this more accurate calculation, you'll need to use Calculated Fields. A calculated field is quite simple: you select a column of data (also known as a "field") and tell Excel a specific calculation you'd like to do.

Here are some examples of common calculations you'll make in digital marketing:

**Note: Average Position is a weighted average. You'll first need to add a new column in your data sheet, named "AvgPos x Impressions" above, the column will multiples Avg. Position x Impressions. See more here.

Of all the useful techniques you learn for pivot tables, the Calculated Fields function is the ultimate treasure. As a general rule, anything that involves an average or percent (CTR, CPA, CRV, CPI or Avg. Position) will require a formula created through the Calculated Fields dialog box instead of with the pivot tables Summarize Data dialog box.

Whatever you're focusing on in your pivot table, Calculated Fields allows you to do the math behind the scenes. Without Calculated Fields, marketers have to copy and paste their pivot tables and then copy their formulas an endless number of times. This is how you get innocent mistakes in your data.

See more dynamic Calculated Field tutorials here.

Tip: Use IFERROR() in Calculated Fields as a Cue

A problem frequently experienced using Calculated Fields is the #DIV/0! error (which means you can't divide by zero). This can happen when calculating CPA (ad spend/conversions), for instance, if you had no conversions (0).

If you ignore the error, you're missing out on valuable information. For example, keywords can spend thousands and convert zero times.

This is information you'll want when you sort from worst CPA to best. But it won't show up if you've left the #DIV/0! error untouched.

The solution to this problem is adding the IFERROR() formula to the calculated field. Add the IFERROR() formula and make sure to return "spend" or "cost", as shown below. Open the Calculated Fields dialog again, go to the CPA field, and change the formula to:

=IFERROR(Spend/Conversions,Spend)

Turns out IFERROR() isn't the only formula you can use in calculated fields.

Tip: Get Rid of GETPIVOTDATA()

Bill Jelen (aka Mr. Excel) said it best, "You've just built a pivot table in Excel. You click outside of the pivot table. You build an Excel formula. You copy this formula down to all of the rows in the pivot table. The calculation reports the wrong answer for all but the first row of the pivot table. You've just been stung by the Generate GetPivotData 'feature'."

We've all been there. You're expecting to see =(C3/D3). That is nothing like the mess that shows up. You can fix this mess by simply turning of GETPIVOTDATA.

Here is how you can turn off GETPIVOTDATA.

How is this feature useful? Think of GETPIVOTDATA like the GPS coordinates for data in your table.

In pivot tables, data moves around frequently and quickly. GETPIVOTDATA keeps tabs on your data, so you can build charts and other formulas as your data moves around (as long as your data is visible).

All that GPS data can also turn simple calculations into a ridiculous cascading mess. Turning off GETPIVOTDATA lets you do simple, quick calculations without dragging the entire hemisphere into the matter. It frees you up to move more nimbly when you need to.

More Tips, Next Time

We'll break down sorting and filtering in the next part of this series, outlining one or two more tips you may not have known. Was this helpful? Anything to add? Any questions? Please let me know and use the comments below!

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�Think like a publisher� has become the mantra for many marketers over the past 2 years.

While experienced content marketer already recognize the value of great content, the lines are blurring between traditional publishers and brand publishers as more companies adopt more sophisticated content marketing practices.

Just as publishers are creating digital magazines and apps to better engage audiences, so too are brands who want to engage directly with target audiences as part of their owned media demand generation programs.

But what kind of content makes sense in a digital magazine? What effect does interactive digital content have on creating compelling customer experiences? And how do online magazines fit with other digital marketing efforts like social media and online advertising?

Ready to Receive. A significant�trend fueling the growth of online magazines is the launch of budget tablets. If you attended CES 2014, the boom was pretty clear from the bounty of budget tablets on display. With prices expected to run between $129 and $179, 2014 may be the year of affordable high-resolution tablets which are perfect for consuming online magazine content.

Research shows that more than 59% of people read more magazines after purchasing a tablet and 63% want to have more choices of digital magazines. That means there�s definitely a gap for your company’s content marketing to fill.

Everybody Wins. One way to meet the demand for content on the rising number of mobile and tablet devices is with a digital publishing solution like an online magazine or app. The benefits of a digital magazine is that it integrates interactivity and analytics into a mobile adapted interface that satisfies the needs of consumers and provides performance information for brands.

The Data Agrees. Adobe, whose Digital Publishing Suite (DPS) powers the majority of all digital issues consumed on mobile devices (nearly 80%), reports they have seen a 115% increase in the number of�downloads of DPS-built publications in a year-over-year comparison from November 2012 to 2013. DPS-created apps also have three times as many unique monthly readers as they did one year ago, they state. This bodes well for both traditional publishers as well as brands developing their own online magazine audience.

Some brands, like Pandora, are publishing digital magazines outright and companies, like Xerox, are partnering with traditional print publications like Forbes to set an example for what killer B2B content marketing can look like.

Magazines for the Masses. Magazine-style aggregators, like Flipboard, are creating another content creation ecosystem by providing a way for anyone anywhere to create visually stunning digital magazines. Flipboard, which works with Android and IOS devices, does this by aggregating information from your social feeds, RSS feeds, and other partner websites and then presents it to you on your mobile device. In just three short years, they�ve attracted 85+ million users.

Notable brands, like Banana Republic and Levi�s, are creating remarkable compelling visual content using Flipboard and more are coming online every month.

As Jeff Bullas writes, �Flipboard is the new way to flip that marketing switch for visual impact. It adds another dimension to your content on a web that craves stunning images and photos.�

Online Magazine Pros:�Potential to diversify and expand its audience demographics. Apps are a good way to reach a younger demographic, for example.Use of rich media, such as video, enhances the �infotainment� value of the content and gives the user a superior experience over print. It�s the �showing� versus the �telling� that makes multimedia presentations such a powerful tool for engaging customers.Ability to segment consumers and use the data to create a different experience for the user based on who they are and what device they are coming from.Online Magazine Cons:A digital magazine may be isolated from the powerful sharing mechanisms of the web and is undiscoverable to new readers.Tablet and smartphone users only have the time or interest to regularly engage with a handful of apps.All content is not necessarily good content regardless of taking advantage of a shiny new toy.What Marketers Are Saying:

�I�m always trying to think more like a publisher than a marketer. � Our strategy is not to create a destination, but to feed the social graph.� Bryan Rhoads, editor in chief, IQMatters, Intel

�If you�re aiming towards the future it seems like the right idea. While I love printed publications, the product I wanted to create was going to focus on video.� David Ellner, founder and CEO of Panna.

Examples of Effective Digital Magazine Content

University of Connecticut

From 360-degree panoramic views and interactive photo galleries to videos and bonus stories, UConn Magazine � the University�s twice-yearly alumni publication � is now delivering a new kind of experience to readers, with audiovisual storytelling made possible through the magazine�s free app for tablet devices. The UConn Magazine app launched in the fall of 2013, offering all of the content found in the print edition with the following features now made possible in digital form.

Intel

Intel�s�new digital magazine, IQ Matters, offers a peek at the outer edge of design, technology, social and big data. They developed an algorithm to curate social content in a way that leverages their own employees. They publish what employees are sharing and what�s grabbing their attention. It�s a combination of a social algorithm, plus an employee filter that crowdsources what they are saying and sharing and uses that as a discovery tool.

To read the full story of the why this new �social property� works, read this interview with the editor in chief.

Virgin Media

Who other than Sir Richard Branson would advance the case for digital magazine content one step beyond what other publishers are doing? In January 2012, Virgin Media launched a bi-monthly magazine, using Blippar, an augmented reality app, which gives customers a fully interactive experience. From Richard Branson�s video welcome message to a personalized game where a user can blow up the Eiffel Tower, the magazine lets readers experience Virgin Media�s multi-channel offering.

You have to step into this totally immersive experience to grasp fully the features of this technology.

Online Magazines & Apps Best Practices:There is no one-size-fits-all for creating captivating digital content. As with all content, online and offline, it�s imperative you know your audience and the technology requirements of each platform.While the tablet screen dimensions are growing (new tablet sizes range from 7? to 10?), smaller screens require even more compelling content.Content must align with what a consumer wants and how he or she wants it.

Companies have learned consumers want digital content, and brands have shown how they can engage directly with consumers and buyers through digital magazines and apps.

While some believe digital publications have a prominent role in the future of content marketing, magazine apps have drawn conflicting opinions from those in the marketing, publishing and tech industries. Some believe magazine apps live in a space overcrowded by other apps and, cut off from the open social stream of the web, suffer from poor discoverability and share-ability.

The goal of all content marketing is to increase engagement, drive cost efficiencies and improve conversions. Online magazines and apps represent a natural development to provide a complete and immersive customer-facing experience.

Have you tried creating an online magazine with Flipboard or a custom publishing solution? What’s your mix of curating vs. creating of content?

For more posts on content marketing tactics, be sure to see the full list here.